


Give me a sign

by WritingOutLoud



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst?, Grief/Mourning, M/M, POV John Watson, Pre-Slash, Reichenbach Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:42:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23426446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritingOutLoud/pseuds/WritingOutLoud
Summary: Sherlock jumps; John breaks.The internal monologue of John Watson after the fall.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 17
Kudos: 33





	Give me a sign

Blood. On the pavement. Dark, red, sticky; seeping through your hair, staining your shirt. Drenching my fingers.

Eyes wide open. Blue and green and hazel, blended together. Frozen, glassy.

Death. Its smell in the air. No pulse. Cooling skin.

A second, then you’re gone. In the end, that’s all it is. One second of living, breathing, falling; then nothing.

I reach to hold you, to take you into my arms and wish the life back into you, but someone pulls me away. I resist, desperate to touch you just one last time, to find the right words that will change all of this. Their grip is too strong, and my arms are too weak. It’s taking everything I have just to remain upright.

Before I know it, you are gone. Whisked away on a gurney, head twisted and limbs limp. I am left alone. Again.

Blood stains the pavement, dark crimson, still wet. There wasn’t even time for it to dry. I reach for it, trailing my fingers through the cooling liquid, the only thing I have left of Sherlock Holmes. I pull, dig, scrape at the concrete, trying to erase the memory. You can’t be dead. You can’t be gone. Not like this. Not ever.

Somehow, I end up in a car. Mycroft sits across from me, solemn and silent. Or, at least I think he’s silent. I can’t hear anything except my own breath in my chest and my pulse in my ears. I’m drowning, and no-one will let me breathe. Someone, please, let me breathe.

The car stops outside Baker Street. I pause, barely registering where we are. I don’t move. I won’t go back there, not without you. Mycroft’s voice reaches my ears, but I just shake my head and turn to look out the window. Sometime later, I end up sat on Greg’s sofa, shivering and blurry eyed. 

I can’t go back to the flat. Not now. If I don’t walk back down that street, if I never enter that room, then you might still be there. You might be playing your violin by the window, waiting for me to come home. I know you used to watch me when I left; would always know when I was about to come home from the clinic, waiting until my key was in the door before you’d abandon the window, pretending to be busy with something else. I saw you, sometimes. You often accused me of seeing but not observing, and that was true, sometimes. But not always.

Occasionally, I convinced myself you loved me. That those glances, filled with a spark; electrical tension, meant something more. Every brush of the hand, every touch of the shoulder; I convinced myself that they meant something. That they were calculated; intentional. More nights than often, I’d lay in my bed upstairs, thinking over the day and trying to convince myself to take the long walk downstairs, cross the corridor and slip soundlessly into your room. I’d imagine sliding into your bed, curling up next to you, bathing in your warmth. Or perhaps, I’d follow you into the flat after a case, high on adrenaline, and push you against the wall, the force making it tremor beneath you. I’d pause, drawing out the moment, before finally kissing you, pulling out your every breath. God, it kept me awake those long nights.

Even towards the end, there were still those moments, palpable tension filling the air. I almost did it, then. Kissed you. When you vaulted the fence, leaving me handcuffed to you on the other side. There, hands joined, I almost closed the distance. And I thought maybe you would too. But then the moment passed, and I told myself- after the case. I’d tell you after the case. But that day never came.

Christ, the more I think about it, the more I wonder if I fabricated the whole thing. If my lust filled mind delusioned itself in thinking that we were anything more than friends. How selfish could I be, in those last few hours when you were struggling to keep together, on the edge of this, to be thinking of your kiss, and whether you might ever come to love me. Blinded by want, I didn’t see what I should have. That you were calling for help. That you needed me.

*

Numbness. Time passes by in hours, one bleeding into the next, until days, weeks and months have gone. Most of it sat in my bedsit, staring at the ceiling, wondering where it all went wrong.

How could I have missed it? That’s the question that keeps me awake, keeps me trapped inside my head until all I can hear is my screams. They drip from the walls, reminding me that I am alone. They seep into my skin, cooling my bones until I lie shivering in the bed, praying that someone will come and take the feeling away. How could I have missed that this was where you were heading. I don’t believe, for a second, that you were a fraud. You were too clever. Too obnoxious sometimes, to be honest. But you were genuine, and I always believed in you. I was ready to defend you until my death: not yours. Never yours.

I should have stayed there, in Bart’s, that day. I should have seen through your lies, stayed with you in that morgue whilst you were still warm and breathing. I should have talked you down. That was my job, and I failed. And now you’re gone. Forever.

How was I supposed to know? But it was my job to. I should have seen it coming; not been so wrapped up in myself.

On the really bad days, I plead to you. I sink to my knees and beg, not caring that I don’t believe anyone is there to hear me. I do it anyway. I ask for a sign, just something, a small glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, you might be alive. One more miracle. Don’t be dead.

Against my better judgement, against everything I know to be true, I long for a small scrap of evidence that this was all a trick. Some strange fever dream. I would do anything for that to be true. Though, for you, I always would have done anything. You knew that. Hell, I shot a man the first time we met. If that didn’t say everything about who we were, I don’t know what does.

*

Months pass, and I alternate between the clinic and the bedsit. I have no choice but to work, but it hurts having to get up every day and act like nothing is wrong. Like my entire life didn’t collapse when you jumped from that rooftop.

You saved me. I was dying when you met me; drowning in grief for a war I was no longer part of. Longing for the company of those I’d already lost, and haunted by those I couldn’t save. In a single sentence, you handed me the keys to the rest of my life. In a single evening, you gave me the air I needed to breathe. Now, I don’t know how.

I am sure, that without you, I would have been dead long ago. Swallowed and spat out by the demons in my head. Instead, I was born again- I found the life I craved and with it a man who understood me more than anything. And all at once I fell in love with him.

*

The first time I visit your grave is six months after you died. Six long months. I tried, before then, but I couldn’t reach the gate. Some part of me believed that if I saw the headstone, etched with your name, then it would become real. The events would become fixed and there would be nothing I could do to change them.

I end up sat, back resting against your headstone, watching the sky. I talk. Slowly at first, then gushing, letting everything I ever wanted to tell you rush out of me like water. It helps, for a while. I almost forget that you can’t hear me.

This isn’t the way I thought things would go. I lied to myself that we were invincible, that nothing could ever get to us. We’d keep on going- solving cases, chasing criminals, forever. That maybe, one day, we’d grow old. Together. Not me alone. I suppose they say it’s always the ones you least expect. The ones that jump. I knew you had bad days, like I had bad days, but we pushed through. We coped. Maybe I should have paid more attention.

I’m not sure when the texting started. Slowly, unnoticed, I shift from having conversations with your grave to texting you daily. Things I would have normally shared. The man on the bus that looked like Mycroft- the woman at the clinic who believed the world was flat. I think you’d probably agree with her.

Slowly, my life turns back to normal. I still carry my grief around with me, but now it is small enough to hide in my heart. My secret. Still, things aren’t the same without you. They never could be.

Then, one night, alone once more, I send what I expect to be my last message. A final goodbye, before I pack my grief away in a box, only to take out occasionally. Perhaps, in time, I can heal.

**I love you. Don’t be dead.**

And there, alone in the dark, comes the sign I’d been waiting for, and I am born once again.

**I heard you. SH**


End file.
